AGP Support on new Nforce4 motherboards?

[imported_IKnowNothing]

Hi guys,

My budget for a new computer allows me to buy everything except a video card. That will have to wait for a few months. I'm upgrading from a 9700AIW pro and want to make sure I get a wicked card, probably two Ultras (ouch in the pocket).

Does anyone know if I can use my old AGP card on the new SLI Nforce motherboards from ASUS or MSI. I would hate to buy one if I can't use my old card for a short period.

Also I've been and avid ATI owner for years. Do the Nvidia Ultras look as good?

Cheers!

 

[Farmer]

Good luck getting any Ultras, even less so at or below MSRP; my friend ordered one from Dell I don't know how many months ago, and they said that ETA was 21 Dec!

The X800XT and the GFC 6800 Ultra are comparable in all aspects, the 6800 Ultra, of course, can be used in SLI. Then there's the X800XT PE and the GFC 6800 Ultra Extreme. These last two cards are so scarce right now that nothing should be said about them (I think nVidia even declared the Ultra Extreme to be media smoke and mirrors).

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: IKnowNothing

Does anyone know if I can use my old AGP card on the new SLI Nforce motherboards from ASUS or MSI. I would hate to buy one if I can't use my old card for a short period.

You can't. Not much else can be said here. You either shell out for a new card, hold off your whole purchase until you can afford to, or buy an nForce3 and AGP.

 

[Shimmishim]

in terms of agp support + sli... i doubt there will be nforce4 support for this...

there will be nforce4 boards w/o sli support but don't know if they will feature agp support though....

as much as you love that card, you might have to get rid of it

ati is also coming out with something similar to SLi but i'm not sure when it'll be released... as for the soruce of this... it was on the news column thing i believe on AT homepage a few weeks ago? not sure...

 

[sexualrug]

There will be no SLI + AGP or AGP+nforce

I think pci express + agp would be rare enough without the exotics.

 

[imported_IKnowNothing]

Guess its time to work overtime for the video cards

I must control this addiction!

 

[Peter]

AGP+NF4 is easily doable - just hook an AMD8151 HyperTransport-AGP tunnel in front of or alongside the NF4, et voilà, you got AGP _and_ PCIE.

The other way round works just as well. Combine ALi's forthcoming HT-PCIE tunnel with any of the shipping AGP chipsets, and you got both.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Peter
AGP+NF4 is easily doable - just hook an AMD8151 HyperTransport-AGP tunnel in front of or alongside the NF4, et voilà, you got AGP _and_ PCIE.

The other way round works just as well. Combine ALi's forthcoming HT-PCIE tunnel with any of the shipping AGP chipsets, and you got both.

Good stuff, thanks. I'm going to keep that in mind and see if anyone actually does this. I recall you mentioning price would be high by adding the 8151 but the ALi solution sounds less expensive to implement. Do you think that will be the case?

 

[xtknight]

There will be no nForce 4 AGP solutions. However, ECS has a solution called AGP Express which allows you to have PCI express and AGP. The AGP is more limited though because it goes through the normal PCI bus (the slow PCI). And certainly, there will be no SLI for AGP without heavy modding. The good news is PCI express graphics cards are getting very cheap and have good performance. Take for example the regular GeForce 6200 which I'm guessing performs as good if not better than an ATI Radeon 9800 XT. It is supposed to retail about $120-150 depending on how much RAM you want on-board it. $120 for 128 MB or $150 for 256 MB, according to Chinese web sites.

Edit: Certainly anything is possible, so don't give up completely on AGP with nForce4. That, however, will not be the default config for nForce4, even the lowest nForce4 "scaled edition". Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I believe. The nForce4 scaled edition may or may not be able to support AGP, I'm not sure. The first French website that posted about nForce4 believes the scaled edition will support AGP. Who knows?

 

[Peter]

Such pseudo-AGP trickery is not needed. Thanks to the AMD64 architecture where the chipset no longer is the system core but just a bunch of I/O chips, bus interface tunnels can be added and combined freely. For example, we've seen NForce combined with an AMD PCIX tunnel on workstation boards.
So why not make a board that has PCIE and AGP, or PCIE and PCIX, or all three, or whatever.

edit in response to xtknight: The tunnels and "chipsets" operate completely independent - e.g. an nF4 chip would have no say about whether an AGP tunnel chip elsewhere does AGP or not, and the chips wouldn't even have to cooperate. Again, free your mind from the concept of the chipset being the system core. On AMD64, it is not.

 

[Concillian]

Yes, Peter, it can be done in the way you mention, but I'm not holding my breath for a dual bridge mothrboard to come out. I think the chances are pretty damn slim for something like that to actually see the light of day.

 

[xtknight]

OK, thank you for clarifying that Peter. I knew it could be done some how but like Concillian said, it probably won't come out any time soon.